Install GoLang on Ubuntu and Write Your First Program

Install GoLang on Ubuntu and Write Your First Program in Go

GoLang is a very powerful programming language developed by Google. It is a compiled programming language. It means, Go source codes are converted to machine code or commonly known as executable file. Then you can run these executable files on other computers. Unlike Java that converts source code to byte code, then runs these byte codes using JVM (Java Virtual Machine), Go does not use any VM (Virtual Machines). It is not an interpreted language either like Python or PHP. It is very fast and built with concurrency in mind. GoLang is widely used for Web Development because it has many libraries available for such stuff.

In this article, I will show you how to install the GoLang on different versions of Ubuntu operating system and how to write, run and build your first program with Go. Let’s get started.

Installing GoLang:

GoLang is available in the official package repository of Ubuntu. First update the package repository cache of your Ubuntu operating system with the following command:

$ sudoapt-get update

Your package repository cache should be updated.

Now you can install GoLang from the official repository of Ubuntu.

Ubuntu 16.04 LTS:

On Ubuntu 16.04LTS, you can install GoLang 1.6 from the official repository of Ubuntu. This is the recommended version of GoLang on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.

To install GoLang 1.6 from the official repository of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, run the following command:

$ sudoapt-get install golang

If you want to install GoLang 1.9 on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, enable the ‘xenial-backports’ ‘universe’ repository and run the following command:

$ sudoapt-get install golang-1.9

Ubuntu 17.10:

On Ubuntu 17.10, you can install GoLang 1.7, GoLang 1.8 and GoLang 1.9.
To install GoLang 1.8 on Ubuntu 17.10, you can run the following command:

$ sudoapt-get install golang

Or

$ sudoapt-get install golang-1.8

To install GoLang 1.7 on Ubuntu 17.10, run the following command:

$ sudoapt-get install golang-1.7

To install GoLang 1.9 on Ubuntu 17.10, run the following command:

$ sudoapt-get install golang-1.9

I am using Ubuntu 17.10 for the demonstration in this article. I will install GoLang 1.8.

$ sudoapt-get install golang

Once you run the command to install the version of GoLang you want, you should see the following prompt. Just press ‘y’ and then press <Enter> to continue.

GoLang should be installed.

Testing GoLang:

Now run the following command to verify that Go commands are accessible:

$ go version

You should see similar output as shown in the screenshot below. It means Go is working correctly.

Writing your First “Hello World” Program on GoLang:

The very first program that most people write while learning a language is the “Hello World” program. I would say, “It’s the gateway to the heart of the programming language”. It is very simple. All a “Hello World” program does is; it prints “Hello World” to the console or terminal.

Now I am going to write a simple “Hello World” program in Go.

This is the code that I am going to run.

package main
import "fmt"
func main() {
fmt.Println("Hello World");
}

It is saved in ‘~/work/helloworld.go’ file. Remember to save GoLang source files with .go extension.

GoLang can be used like an interpreted language like Python. It means that you can run a GoLang source file directly without manually compiling it first.

To run a go program, run the following command:

$ go run GO_SOURCE_FILE

In my case GO_SOURCE_FILE is ‘helloworld.go’.

$ go run helloworld.go

You should be able to see “Hello World!” output on the console as shown in the screenshot below.

The good thing about GoLang is that, you can also build an executable file out of GoLang source code. So it can be executed just as C or C++ programs.

Run the following command to compile Go source code:

$ go build GO_SOURCE_FILE

In my case, GO_SOURCE_FILE is ‘helloworld.go’.

$ go build helloworld.go

It should generate an executable file ‘helloworld’ as shown in the screenshot below.

Now you can run the executable as follows:

$ ./helloworld

You should see “Hello World!” on the terminal just like before.

So this is how you install GoLang on Ubuntu and write your first program in GoLang. Thanks for reading this article.

About the author

Shahriar Shovon

Freelancer & Linux System Administrator. Also loves Web API development with Node.js and JavaScript. I was born in Bangladesh. I am currently studying Electronics and Communication Engineering at Khulna University of Engineering & Technology (KUET), one of the demanding public engineering universities of Bangladesh.